Friday, November 20, 2015

Bizarre Cases of People Who Spontaneously Ceased to Exist

Mysterious disappearances aren’t new. For whatever reasons, some
people just seem to vanish without a trace, never to be seen again. Yet,
as bizarre as these cases may be, there seems to be an even stranger
type of disappearance out there; people who vanish in full view of
others, under circumstances where it seems impossible that they could
have even gone far, let alone totally disappeared. These are the cases
in which people were there one moment and gone the next, seeming to have
just literally faded from existence, leaving us baffled and perhaps
even questioning what we think we know about this mysterious world of
ours. Let’s take a look at the history of some of the more curious
accounts of these spontaneous vanishings of people who by all
indications seemed to have just ceased to exist.One of the earliest well-known accounts of people spontaneously
vanishing comes from back in the 1700s. Sometime in the 1760s, in the
English town of Shepton Mallet, there lived an elderly man in his 70s by
the name of Owen Parfitt. Crippled with disease, Parfitt was said to be
unable to get around on his own, instead spending his days either
bedridden or sitting outside by the doorway to his home, where he lived
with his sister. According to the story, one day old Owen was sitting in
his usual spot by the door, where his sister, also his primary
caretaker, had been keeping an eye on him as usual. On this day the
weather was rather chilly, and Owen had covered himself with a coat, but
there were no indications that anything was amiss, or that this day was
any different from the many other times Owen had sat outside. When his
sister went to move him, she found that only the coat remained where
Owen had been sitting just moments before. Since he was unable to walk
on his own, she at first thought that perhaps a neighbor had moved him
inside for her, as was sometimes the case, but the old man was nowhere
to be found and the neighbors denied having moved him, although they had
seen him sitting there all day. In fact, there were many witnesses
about on that day, yet no one had seen anything unusual at all. Owen’s
sister searched the area but Owen was nowhere to be found, and it was
baffling that he could have gotten far so soon, in front of so many
people, and with the inability to walk. A search was launched by
authorities, but no trace of Owen Parfitt was ever found, leading to the
popular legend at the time that the Devil had come for him as payment
for a pact they had made. His disappearance remains a mystery to this
day.Other equally baffling cases continued into the 1800s. On the night
of November 25, 1809, a British diplomat by the name of Benjamin
Bathurst was on his way to Berlin in order to get back to London after
an important trip to Vienna. On the way, Bathurst made a stop at the
town of Perleberg in order to get new horses and to have a meal. When
the horses were ready and he had finished eating his dinner, Bathurst
excused himself and told his assistant he would go out and wait in the
carriage so that they could continue on their trip. The diplomat then
went out to the carriage and the assistant followed moments after, yet
when the door to the carriage was opened Bathurst wasn’t there. In fact,
he was nowhere to be seen, and there was no sign of where he could have
gone, even though he had been there just seconds before. Considering
his prominence as a diplomat, a massive search was immediately put
together, complete with dogs scouring the woods, house to house
searches, and thorough dragging of the nearby river Stepnitz, but
nothing could be found. After several more searches, a coat thought to
have belonged to Bathhurst was found in a restroom and some boots were
found in the surrounding wilderness, but it was unclear if they actually
belonged to the missing man or not. At the time, the region was ravaged
by war due to the rampaging Napoleon Bonaparte, and Bathurst’s wife
thought the French had kidnapped her husband, but Bonaparte himself
reportedly denied having any knowledge of such a thing, and even aided
in search efforts. In the end, no definitive trace of Bathurst would
ever be found and he was never seen again; seemingly erased from
existence.Sometimes, not only did the person disappear, but they did so right
before the eyes of witnesses, literally fading away in plain sight. Just
a few years after Bathurst’s odd case, another even more bizarre
disappearance was to occur. In 1815, at a Prussian prison at
Weichselmunde, a prisoner by the name of Diderici was doing a 10-year
sentence for assuming the identity of his dead employer by dressing up
in his clothes and a wig and trying to withdraw a large amount of money
after the man had died of a stroke. Allegedly, one day Diderici was
being led through the exercise yard in chains in a line of other
prisoners, when something very odd began to happen. According to other
prisoners, Diderici began to literally fade away, his body gradually
becoming transparent and immaterial until finally his empty manacles and
chains clattered to the ground as baffled prisoners and prison guards
looked on. An inquiry into the case would turn up nearly 30 eyewitness
accounts from both convicts and guards that reported the exact same
thing; that Diderici had become slowly invisible until he was simply not
there anymore. Puzzled by the case, the authorities would end up
brushing the whole affair under the carpet, closing the case and
proclaiming it an “Act of God.” Diderici would never be seen again.A similarly bizarre vanishing supposedly happened in 1873 in
Leamington Spa, England. A shoemaker by the name of James Worson was out
with his friends when he suddenly made a bet with them that he could
run without stopping all the way to Coventry, which was a full 16 miles
away. The friends did not have faith in Worson’s ability to do this, and
readily took him up on the bet. In order to make sure he followed
through, the friends allegedly followed Worson in a horse drawn cart.
Worson ran for a few miles without any problems, and his friends were
starting to think they might actually lose the bet when he suddenly
tripped on something in the road. The story goes that Worson pitched
forward, but never hit the ground, instead completely blinking out of
existence right before his terrified friends’ eyes. A police search
turned up nothing and this seems to be another case of someone who just
spontaneously ceased to exist in full view of witnesses.One of the more famous such cases of baffling sudden disappearances
in the same era happened in 1890 to the French inventor Louis Le Prince,
mostly known today for his contributions to cinema and as the first
person to ever capture moving images on film. On September 16, 1890, Le
Prince boarded a train to return to Paris after having visited his
brother in Dijon. As the train rattled along on its way, Le Prince was
seen checking in his luggage and entering his cabin, from which no one
would see him leave during the rest of the journey. When the train
reached Paris, Le Prince did not disembark, and a train conductor was
sent to his room to rouse him, thinking he had merely fallen asleep in
his cabin. When the cabin was opened, it was discovered that both Le
Prince and his luggage were gone. A complete search of the train turned
up no trace of the man or his belongings, and no one could be found who
could recall Le Prince ever leaving his cabin once the train had
departed. Since the train had made no stops between Dijon and Paris, he
could not have gotten off anywhere, and the cabin windows had been
closed and locked from the inside. Additionally, there was no sign at
all of any foul play and no reports that anything had been amiss during
the trip. Le Prince was just simply gone. Interestingly, his
disappearance would allow Thomas Edison to take credit for inventing
motion pictures, even though Le Prince had already been in possession of
plans for this invention long before, which he had been hoping to have
patented in America and would have if he had not gone missing. This is
an interesting case of a mysterious disappearance actually shaping
history as we know it.Of course, stories of such baffling vanishings have continued into
more modern times as well. In April of 1959, a man named Bruce Campbell
was travelling by car with his wife from Massachusetts to go visit their
son, who lived far away. At one point on their long, cross country
journey they allegedly stopped for the night at a motel in Jacksonville,
Illinois. The couple, exhausted from driving all day, promptly retired
for the night. When Mrs. Campbell woke up in the morning, she found that
her husband was no longer in the bed with her. At first she was not so
concerned, thinking he’d just gotten up early, but it soon became clear
that he was nowhere in the room. Even more strangely, Bruce’s clothes
were still right where he had left them the previously evening and his
suitcase had not been touched, meaning that he had gone outside in his
pajamas. Additionally, all of his personal belongings and even his
wallet with all of his money were also still precisely where he’d left
them. Even after an investigation by authorities Bruce Campbell was
never found.A similar well known case involving a couple allegedly occurred in
1975, when a Jackson and Martha Wright were driving from New Jersey to
New York City. According to Jackson’s version of events, the two were
driving through the Lincoln tunnel, in New York City, when they noticed
that there was a large amount of condensation on their windows. The
couple then pulled over and Jackson went about wiping the fog off the
front windshield while Martha took care of the back. It was at this
point that Jackson says he turned to see how his wife was doing and
found that she was gone. In fact, the woman was nowhere to be seen, even
though she had been there just moments before. Jackson would claim that
he had not seen or heard anything unusual, and it would have been
impossible for her to get very far in such a brief amount of time.
Although this all sounds highly suspicious, police were never able to
find any evidence of foul play, and Jackson was never considered a
suspect in the disappearance. Martha Wright’s sudden disappearance
remains a baffling mystery.Even more recent is the strange disappearance of Brian Shaffer, who
was a medical student at Ohio State University. On April 1, 2006, Brian
went out to have some drinks at a local bar called the Ugly Tuna
Saloona. Some drinks turned into a lot of drinks, and Brian was reported
to be heavily intoxicated as the night wore on. At some point between
1:30 and 2 AM in the morning, Brian made a drunken call to his
girlfriend and then was seen talking to two women at the bar. This would
be the last time anyone would ever see him. A subsequent investigation
found that no one remembered seeing him after he was witnessed talking
to the two women, and even more bizarrely, security camera footage
showed Brian entering the bar but at no point does it ever show him
actually leaving. With no evidence of foul play or any reason for why he
would have suddenly disappeared, it remains yet another eerie unsolved
vanishing.On July 18, 2007 there was another case of someone who seems to have
just stepped off the face of the earth. 55-year-old Barbara Bolick was
out on a hiking trip with her friend Jim Ramaker in Montana’s Bitterroot
Mountains, with Barbara walking about 6-9 meters (20-30 ft) behind him.
At one point along their scenic hike, Jim claimed that he stopped to
admire the scenery, and when he turned to look behind him after a mere
minute, Barbara was nowhere to be seen. A complete search of the
surrounding area would turn up no trace of what happened to the woman,
and although Jim Ramaker had been the last person to see her, police
never found any reason to suspect he had done anything to her. No new
leads in the case have ever been found.Yet another creepy recent case happened in 2008. On the evening of
May 14, 2008, 19-year old college student Brandon Swanson was on his way
to visit his family in Marshall, Minnesota, when he lost control of his
car and crashed it into a ditch. Brandon was not injured, but without a
ride he decided to call his parents to have them come pick him up. He
called them on his cell phone and tried to explain to them where he was,
but they were not able to find him. His father then called Brandon’s
cell phone to ask for more details on where they could find him, and his
son told him that he was headed toward the town of Lynd. As they
talked, Brandon reportedly suddenly cursed and the line went dead.
Subsequent efforts to call him back went unanswered and police were
called in, who were able to locate the car but could find no trace of
Brandon or his phone. It remains a mystery as to where he went and why
he abruptly swore when talking to his father on the phone before
disappearing without a trace.On rare occasions, there has even been video evidence put forward
purportedly showing people disappearing in the blink of an eye. One such
piece of weird video footage uploaded to YouTube seems to show a man
walking along a dark street in Jackson, Wyoming, which seems rather
normal enough until he seems to steadily fade until all that remains are
two white dots where his feet should be. These white spots continue
right along until they are off camera. There is a good chance this is
some sort of video glitch or even a hoax, but it is certainly a bizarre
piece of footage. The video can be seen here.What are we to make of these cases of people just vanishing within
seconds? There have been many theories seeking to explain this
phenomenon, ranging from the scientific to the decidedly fringe. Some of
the more far out theories have revolved around alien abduction,
stumbling through spontaneous interdimensional portals, and time slips.
Those subscribing to the alien theory point out that the few
spontaneously vanishing people who have later been found often exhibit
what are considered classic signs of alien abduction, such as
disorientation, lost memories, and missing time. Author and researcher
David Paulides has explained on this further, saying:

In the vast majority of the cases that are chronicled, if
people are found, they are located unconscious or semi-conscious and
many times in areas that were previously searched. In The vast majority
of these incidents, the people are so young they cannot speak or they
have a disability that prohibits them from speaking, or they can’t
remember what happened. In the rare incident where they do remember
facts, they are baffling.

Others have proposed that there are certain areas in the world that just seem to suck people in and never let go. In his book Missing 411,
David Paulides investigates 411 cases of bizarre missing person reports
with baffling clues. One of the theories he shares is that there seem
to be around 30 geographical “cluster points” where most of these
vanishings occurred, and that these disappearances often happened within
moments, and in areas full of witnesses. In many of the cases of people
disappearing in these areas, baffling clues were left behind, such as
clothes removed and neatly folded. Are there truly places in the world
that for reasons we may never know simply make people vanish?Of course there is also the long list of reasons for why someone
might choose to disappear, such as to escape problems, start fresh, or
otherwise get away from their life. The problem is that in most of these
cases, the individual was well adjusted and happy with their life. This
same reason tends to discount ideas that they may have went off to
commit suicide. Abduction by kidnappers is a possibility, but how could
this be done so suddenly, quickly, and completely, often with other
people around and with no evidence left behind? There is also the fact
that in the reports I’ve been listing here, the person has vanished
within seconds or even faded away in full view of observers. This seems
to be something weirder than people just running away from home or being
abducted in the conventional sense.Perhaps the most likely answer for some of these cases, in particular
the older ones, is that they have been exaggerated over the years, are
mixed with elements of fiction, or are even downright made up. This has
already been showed to have been the case with several such cases of
supposed spontaneous vanishings. Perhaps the most notable example would
be the infamous mysterious disappearance of David Lang. For those who
have never heard the tale, the story goes that on September 23, 1880, a
farmer named David Lang was strolling across a field near Gallatin,
Tennessee, when he suddenly just blinked out of existence as his wife,
children, and two men passing nearby in a buggy all looked on in
disbelief. When the whole area was checked, they could find no sign of
where David had gone. Making things even weirder was a fifteen-foot
diameter circle of yellowed, dead grass where David had disappeared, and
faint ghostly voices heard by his children seven months later in the
exact spot where he had vanished, which they claimed belonged to their
father.It all seems like such an amazing story, and for years it was treated
as a genuine case of unexplained phenomena, but over time it has become
apparent that it probably never happened. Although the original mention
of this story, the July 1953 issue of FateMagazine, as well as a 1958 book by Harold Wilkins called Strange Mysteries of Time and Space, both
treat the account as an authentic account of high strangeness, it is
most likely not true. Researchers who have investigated the case found
that there is absolutely no record of a Lang family in Gallatin,
Tennessee at that time, no news reports from the era mentioning the
case, and no missing person reports filed at the time for a David Lang.
It is now mostly thought that the story was a fiction created by the
writer of the original Fate Magazine article, Stuart Palmer, as a
journalistic hoax, and who likely got the idea from a story called “The
Difficulty of Crossing a Field,” which was written by a well-known but
eccentric writer fascinated by the unknown named Ambrose Bierce. And so a
long beloved staple of many works on Fortean phenomena and the
unexplained turns out to be almost certainly based on a fictional
account.Some other famous “real” accounts are also probably at least a little
tainted by fiction. Another famous case often listed as genuine in
Fortean literature is the story of Charles Ashmore. In this account, on a
cold, snowy November night in 1878, in the town of Quincy, Illinois, a
young man by the name of Charles Ashmore allegedly left his house to go
get water from a nearby well. When he did not return to the house as
expected, his father and sister became concerned that something might
have happened to him out in the icy weather. Thinking that Charles might
have tripped or even slipped and fell into the well, they went out to
investigate. When they got outside, there was no sign of Charles
anywhere, and he did not respond to having his name called out into the
night. Bizarrely, the only clue left behind were his clear footprints in
the snow, which abruptly stopped halfway to the well. The surrounding
snow was pristine and unmarked by any tracks or signs of a fall. It
seemed as if Charles Ashmore had simply vanished into thin air halfway
through his chore.This is interesting because it is strikingly similar to the tale of a
young boy variously called Oliver Lerch, Oliver Larch, or Oliver
Thomas, and which happens on a Christmas Eve usually described as being
in 1889. As with the Ashmore case, Oliver goes out to get water from a
well during a Christmas party at his house. In this story, Oliver’s
family suddenly hears screams from outside the house and rush out to see
a strange light in the air. They then notice that the boy’s tracks stop
in the snow halfway to the well and his terrified voice can be heard
shouting from the air “Help! It’s got me! It’s got me!”The reason why the two accounts are so similar is that the story of
Oliver Lerch is most likely based on the story of Charles Ashmore, which
was also an account written by none other than Ambrose Bierce, who just
so happened to have an obsession with missing person cases and is also
the source of the story which influenced the David Lang account. In
fact, the story of Charles Ashmore, titled “Charles Ashmore’s Trail,”
was published in the same short story collection as the story which
seems to have influenced the David Lang account, an 1893 book called Can Such Things Be?
Although Bierce had a genuine interest in the paranormal, and
unexplained vanishings in particular, and also wrote many of his stories
in a way that made them seem as if they were based on real events, they
were probably totally fabricated or at best fact mixed with good
amounts of fiction, as many of his stories were known to be. The reason
his work was first treated as a credible source was probably due to the
fact that he wrote in such a realistic, convincing way, claiming to have
done interviews with families of the victims and other witnesses, and
to have gone to these sites to investigate such disappearances. It is
hard with Bierce’s work to tell where the line is between the real and
the fantastical. This has caused many of his stories to be picked up as
real disappearances that actually occurred, often changing slightly over
the years, and muddying the waters for those looking for the genuine
article with real sources, blurring the line between what is reliable
information and what is not.This sort of thing shows that a simple fiction or exaggeration can
take on a life of its own and become treated as fact. Indeed, Bierce’s
work was often sourced in many other articles, journals, and books
without anyone being none the wiser that it was all based on a source
that was questionable at best and bogus at worst. The fact that so many
books on the paranormal and unexplained have frequently mentioned these
stories that are based on fictional accounts does not bode well for the
other myriad similar cases of people vanishing into thin air, and one
wonders if a lot of these tales are similarly colored with fiction or
even complete hogwash. With these strong indications of unexplained
phenomena being treated as real based on fictional sources, it is hard
with these bizarre accounts of spontaneous vanishings to separate what
might have actually happened from what is pure fancy. At the very least
some of these cases must be taken with a grain of salt.So when dealing with these missing person cases, what are we looking
at? Aliens? Interdimensional portals? Time slips? Strange zones that
erase people from existence? Simple crime or foul play? Are these people
who just decided to make themselves disappear? Or is it all
exaggeration and fiction? Perhaps in the end the explanation for these
strange cases involves a mixture of all of the above, and that they
should not be clumped together but rather be each treated almost like a
separate phenomenon to be looked at on its own. It seems that each case
must be looked at and analyzed separately on its own merits and evidence
if we are to come to any understanding of what truly happened. Until we
do, such stories are likely to continue to capture our imagination with
their simple and chilling premise; the idea that we can just suddenly
disappear into thin air at a moment’s notice, to blink out of existence
without warning and never be heard from again.